Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

SHI ANT ISLES. 3*29
Miiose time is unoccupied. Did they trench on profitable
industry, we might find an excuse for such neglect. Nor
can these people plead want of dexterity. Though every
Highlander must be his own architect, the talent which
can build his hut, might make it square, and spacious, and
neat. Want of room is one great cause of disorder; and
he need not want that, since he has both space and materials
at command. If his birch rafter will not give him
a wider roof, it would give him two. His floor need not
be of mud; it need not, at least, be a collection of hill and
dale. Nor need the outside be a collection of pools, and
rubbish, and dirt, through which he can scarcely gain
access to his door. His windows may admit more light,
and light is a standing enemy to disorder and squalidity.
It is said that he cannot even afford a pane of glass.
Occasionally, that may happen ; but it is rare ; and as-
suredly when he has procured it, he is little careful of it,
and will scarcely be at the trouble of replacing it when
broken. I should be sorry indeed, to think that he is
often so poor; but I am very sure he has no ambition to
possess a better house, or more comforts. It would be no
heavy tax on the landholder, if, furnishing nothing to-
wards the farm house, he were to furnish this much, com-
pelling the tenant to maintain it; it is little less than a
duty to see that his people possess all the comforts which,
in their present state of privation, are accessible.
There is nothing so easy, as to argue that he is the
fittest judge of his own wishes and happiness in this case
and that his contentment is more valuable to him than
damask and ivory, purple and gold. The quality of this
contentment is not of a good kind. And if the house and
its concomitants are not the cause of many of the ex-
isting collateral evils connected with want of industry,
it is very certain that they are indications and proofs of
;